Many citizen weather stations are producing weather data today. When these data are used only by the weather station owners, data quality is not an issue. With the communications revolution and the vast capabilities of the internet, many people with weather stations are sending their data far and wide for other people to use. In that case, data quality matters.

The Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) is a private-public partnership with three main goals: 1) to collect weather data contributed by citizens; 2) to make these data available for weather services and homeland security; and 3) to provide feedback to the data contributors so that they have the tools to check and improve their data quality. In fact, the web address, wxqa.com, stands for weather quality assurance.